I can’t talk about the films of Carpenter because I haven’t seen them, and I generally dislike post-1970 filmed horror unless it’s strongly science-fiction.

What I find much more interesting is the possible influence of the early cinema on Lovecraft. This appears to me to be a very neglected area, judging by my Web searches and searches of Google Books. And yet we know that Lovecraft was an avid cinema goer from the early days of the movies onwards…

“I am a devotee of the motion picture” — letter of 1915.

As far as I can tell from Google Books, this is where Joshi’s definitive biography stops in terms of examining the possible influences from early cinema and newsreels. Lovecraft found Chaplin funny, disliked the 1930s Dracula, end of story. A search of the index of Lovecraft Studies finds one lonely article with “cinema” in its title, and that on “Cinematic Interpretations of the Works”. Zero records are found for “film” and “films” or “motion”. Are Lovecraft scholars in need of a joint symposium with the historians of early fantastic cinema?

S.T. Joshi’s monumental Lovecraft biography I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft should be publishing/shipping in August 2010, or so the Hippocampus Press website says. This book is the sumptuous $100 2-volume hardback of S.T. Joshi’s H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), but in a new edition that adds 150,000 words originally cut for length/cost. Plus the text has been…

“thoroughly revised and updated in light of the new information on Lovecraft that has emerged since 1996”.

Unfortunately those in the UK will have to add a rather hefty $55.95 for standard U.S. Postal Service shipping, more than half the cost of the books themselves(!). At current exchange rates that means a total cost with shipping of £99.95. Expensive, but only 1000 copies will be issued, and one third of the run appears to have already been pre-ordered based on word-of-mouth and forum mentions. And compare that price to the cheapest price for a brand-new copy of the 1996 paperback edition via Amazon UK — currently £42.40 inc. shipping. Or the abridged version of the 1996 text, A Dreamer and a Visionary, which sells for £42.50 new.

No news on any possible future paperback edition. I’m guessing we may only get this definitive hardback edition. Many of which will hopefully go to major libraries around the world, once the reviews and notices hit the library journals.

Hopefully this new book won’t continue the tradition of dreadful cover-art, something that seems to plague Lovecraft books.

If you can read Italian, the new 200-page edition of the scholarly journal Studi Lovecraftiani (#12, July 2010) is free online. For the first time, it seems…

“The move of SL from traditional paper format to an electronic version is an experiment which — it is hoped — will bring new readers. From the next issue, however, we will also return to having a paper version of SL, which will complement the electronic one.”

The PDF text allows copy and paste, so you can run it through Google Translate and/or Babelfish if you want to figure out what’s being said — sadly there are no English summaries of the articles.

And it’s easy enough to get a print-on-demand copy of your PDF edition, via an upload to lulu.com, if you really must have one for your collection.

The ‘new publications’ notes at the end of the volume refer to the essay “Sufi Motifs in the Stories of H.P Lovecraft”, but the text doesn’t provide the PDF link: it’s here.

“Still at sea, a team of Canadian and Spanish researchers is using a remotely operated vehicle called ROPOS for dives off Newfoundland with a maximum depth of about 9,800 feet. The 20-day expedition aims to uncover relationships between cold-water coral and other bottom-dwelling creatures in a pristine yet “alien” environment, according to the researchers’ blog.”

“Your short assignment today […] meditate on what makes Cthulhu the truly definitive Elder God. What, exactly, is the appeal?”

TASK FIVE: 30th July 2010.

The long story “The Call of Cthulhu” famously crystallises his proto-Cthulhu mythos, details it, and introduces the Old Ones.

Possible origins and influences — the 1925 eclipse:

The detailed plot of “Cthulhu” was written in the summer of 1925, while Lovecraft was living in New York. By 1925 New York was a city of over 1,000 towering skyscrapers, and the foundations of 30 more were being laid. This great crucible of modernity was plunged Continue reading →

“Artists are being sought for the first Summer of Lovecraft Art Show. The event will be 14th August 2010 in the 5800 block of Sixth Avenue, beginning at 4 p.m. The show is similar to Dale “Dr. Destruction” Wamboldt’s annual Dorian Gray art show — “for artists who may not have found a fit at other art venues,” Wamboldt said. The Gypsy Museum of the Macabre will be there, and there will be a Twilight lookalike contest, along with appearances by Dr. Cryptocis, Dedgar Winter and Dr. Destruction. For more information, e-mail crimsontheatre@sbcglobal.net

“Your short assignment today […] Should Cthulhu ever be cute? What are the underlying sociological implications of the current cute Cthulhu trend?

TASK FOUR: 29th July 2010.

Ultimate spawn-baby of the home-brew cottage industry in Lovecraftiana, plush / vinyl / cut-out / knitted / resin / 3D-printed / kit-modded Cthulhi are the blogger-friendly stars of the age of the mass Internet (1995-?). They fling strangled LOLcats aside with ease, and rise to claim the topmost position of an increasingly large pile of clever and intricate and amusing re-workings of public domain / Creative Commons materials. Tethered by no grasping literary estate, no descendants of some hideously distant cousin of the author, they are free to rampage across the blogosphere. Yet there they remain. They cannot break through to ravage the outer world of Woolworths and Homes & Gardens. Are the hand-made ones profitable? Probably not. Or not very. The time put into making such crafts usual barely outweighs the profits. They make enough to pay for one’s food and drink at a Cthulhucon, perhaps. And doubtless there’s some marketing value — hang a big cute one on your convention sales table, to attract the Call of Cthulhu RPG gamer-kiddies and give the shy ones a conversational opener. But how many who approach will have read more than one or two of the original stories, and then only in RPG game books? Very few. Which perhaps begs the question: is the literary Lovecraft really popular any more? He certainly was in the 1930s, and again in the late 1960s/70s. But is he now slowly being fossilized in print?